Guilt
by Asher77
Summary: Short POV show casing Olivia's feelings when Alex wants to know her a little better. R
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I don't own them just taking them for a test drive.**

Guilt.

It all comes down to that word. I know intellectually that I am not supposed to feel like I was responsible for her. Her life, how it went, and how it ended. But I can't shake that feeling. The child is the parent, and I felt like I was raising her. The broken bottles, the scars that still adorn my body, and the never-ending guilt that if I had just looked more like her, if I had just tired a little harder, or even better… if I had never been born at all then she wouldn't have suffered so.

On my good days I can go about life and the weight doesn't consume me. In the quiet hours before my job I can sit here and contemplate how I could never have made it better for her. But then the questions start. The intrusions, yes I said intrusions, into my past. Even when it comes from a lover it hurts. The disappointment and pain that I find in your eyes, those beautiful blue eyes, because I don't miraculously open up and bare my wounds to bleed all over us both. The earth shattering guilt that overwhelms me when I realize that I can't give you what you so desperately want. An answer, some fabricated key that will unlock all my demons inside and by its very nature show you how to "help" me. You can't even see beyond the telling of my tale to what lies beyond. Admit it Cabot, even if I somehow told you all that happened, you wouldn't have any idea what to do and you would only feel inadequate. Like somehow you failed me by not preventing what happened so many years ago.

Alex, I know you love me. I know you just want to help. But I can't tell you what you want to know. I can't describe the things that were done to me. I can't give you that space inside because I don't want to taint what we have now. It doesn't mean I don't know that you would be there for me it just means I don't want your minds eyes imagining me like that. It isn't about me "trusting" you it is about surviving my own insanity. I don't want you to hear about all the times she screamed at me that I was him. I don't want you to hear about all the trips to the hospital I made to sew my skin back together after yet another bottle broke on me, or the slashes I inflicted on myself. I don't want you to hear about her drunken "boyfriends" that used to come into my room at night when she was passed out and unaware. I especially don't want you to hear about how even if she had been awake she probably wouldn't have cared and would have just gone after another drink to cover over my screams. I don't want to tell you that she hated me even as she hated herself for having me.

But you keep pushing; you keep demanding that I open up. Like it's the Holy Grail and you have a right to be on a quest for it, and I have an obligation to give you a pass into those memories that I try everyday to forget. So now I have a new guilt because I can't tell you what you want to know. Even when I open my mouth to try it won't come out. A guilt that says I am failing you and in so doing failing us. I see it in your eyes every time I turn away and it makes me sad, frightened and above all angry that you can't be happy with how much I love you. How I show you that in everything I do and even in this. You don't have a right to my pain! You can't possibly believe that you're entitled to those memories. That I owe it to you to talk to you. You don't even see what you are doing to me with your demands that are silent as well as out loud. You say you want to help. That you want to be there for me. Yet when all I ask is that you hold me it's not enough, it's never enough and I can't do this anymore. I can't keep feeling like I have done something wrong, I can't keep feeling like a failure. Above all I can't keep loving you when you make the price tag my pain.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimers: I don't own them.**

Warnings: Femslash, um some slight spoilers in here from way back in season one.

Olivia has such beautifully dark deep chocolate eyes that can look right into your very soul. Skin the slightly off ecru of an exotic princess. When she smiles, really smiles for you, you could get lost in her joy. Facial features that are so distinct and well molded that even Michelangelo couldn't have sculpted her better. All are these traits are superficial and just one mark of how very beautiful she is. But all those features are distinctive. All of those marks stand out. All of those wonderfully symmetrical combination's that make her so wildly attractive; seen through her eyes are grisly savage reminders of someone else. Someone she could never be. It adds up to one more reason to hate herself when she catches a glimpse of her features. All her aspects combined sums up to a play tragedy that Shakespeare would have been proud to write. It is that vulnerability that makes her so completely captivating. That knowledge in the back of your head that while she may be present and even love with you she could never be fully yours. She belongs to her demons and oh how they torment her. There is a part of me that knows even while she lies here sleeping in my arms that I can never fully heal her. Love is such a foreign word and she has seen so little of it.

She can tell you exactly what attributes she received from her mother. She labels her body in terms of good traits verses bad. I've seen her look at someone thinking they might be that long distant father and she can detect instantly if the features are even close. She is so set on finding him in herself that she doesn't see how she could never be him. How anyone could really look at her and not just see her is beyond me. I have known rapists, I have known abusers I prosecute them for a living for gods sake and I know that she could never be grouped among them.

I look at her and know she'll never accept that she is a wondrous being. That she'll never see how when she's busy helping victims that the light inside her shines out and the glow can be almost overwhelming. To her it's just a matter of course; to her it's what she owes. Never acknowledging that maybe she's the one that deserves a break. That she deserves to be allowed to live a full life, not one spent trying to right all her fathers' wrongs and living in the darkness as she has her entire life. She still pays the debt her mother has placed on her. She told me once how not long before her mother's death the woman had actually criticized a victim for allowing her emotions to cause her to do something as heinous as murder the man responsible for destroying her life. She had asked actually asked Olivia in a scornful voice if the woman's child would be better off with her in prison, if Olivia would have been better off with her in prison. To which I am sure my lover had no response. How do you say that it couldn't have been worse?

Olivia it hurts to watch you tear yourself apart; it kills to see you drown in your own flames of hate. To watch you shiver with disgust when for a brief moment you catch yourself looking at him. You are not a slave to your genetic imprint. I know not because you told me with words but in the silences I have learned to read that she has convinced you of your guilt. Pain, loss, even agony I see it in every time I look into your haunted eyes. I can feel it even when you are smiling and I know it hides inside waiting to spring out at a moment's notice. It reeks from you and I swear if I could go back in time I would shove all those hurtful moments down your mother's throat.

I know you would say she isn't to blame for all this. You think because you've never told me out loud your life growing up that I only have some vague idea. With my job though you should know I can imagine things more horrible than I hope you actually went through. I've had hints; you drop them when you aren't looking. You probably don't understand exactly how much you give away in your sleep though you do know you give away something. For the longest time I thought your instance on going home at night no matter how far into it we were was just a way to say our relationship wasn't as meaningful to you as it was to me, that you wanted to keep it casual. It wasn't until you started staying that I realized you had a different reason. As I lay awake and I hear you sobbing in your sleep and I am left to fight with my imagination as it fills in the details of the scene that I am hearing you cringe from … and I know Olivia. I know, and you don't want me to. It kills you when I broach the topic not because you don't want to relive the moments but because you would have to face them and perhaps for the first time see them from an adult perspective instead of that little girl that I know is still convinced its all her fault. For all the other victims, that you try so hard to get justice for when it comes to yourself you just let it go, because she has you so thoroughly persuaded that you deserve the penance.

When we first made love I knew that there were things you have experienced that would be difficult for you to be open about. I remember undressing you and you were so beautiful the moon hit your skin just right and the halo it created will stay with me always. Then later I remember tracing all the scars on your body. There were so many Olivia, so very many. After you started staying for the entire night I would lay awake and trace those same marks with my eyes, caress them with feather kisses from my lips while you slept. I just want to help you. I know you don't think talking to me will. You keep the castle closely guarded and the walls are all up. Every guard in defense position all so you don't have to say it, all so you don't have to open up about what haunts you most. She did a fantastic job making you believe that you are to blame for all her shortcomings so much so that you have become your worst abuser.

Olivia I love you. I don't see you as weak. You are the strongest person I know to go to work and see day in and day out what you do, having lived through what you have lived and still be sane. Still discharging your conceived debt, for now I see that for you SVU is a means to pay the bill you feel you owe. So I am marshaling my arguments. Donning my armor in anticipation of an all out war to slay the dragon that is this wall you keep up between you and the world. I will make you see. I will make you hear. I will get you to talk about everything Olivia, and by doing so begin to free you of that all consuming guilt you carry. I won't share you with those burdens that haunt you. I will put them on trial until they receive a guilty conviction that locks them up for life.

You don't have to feel lost to your past. You don't have to fear the love I have for you. You have to stop looking for him in you because he's not there. If you are still confused, still unconvinced about whom you really are and if you ever again dare to look at yourself and still feel lost then I have one last thing to impart. You are mine, and mine alone. You may have been born a Benson but you are now a Cabot and we cherish what belongs to us.


End file.
